


starting point

by chidorinnn



Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, messy contradictory feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 04:37:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16422545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chidorinnn/pseuds/chidorinnn
Summary: Kamoshida’s confession, Ann and Shiho and the volleyball team getting the justice they deserve — it’s not about Ryuji. It’s selfish of him to expect anything in return. Ann’s happy and feels safe at school again, and Shiho just woke up in the hospital. It should be enough, but it isn’t.





	starting point

Ryuji tells him the bare bones of what happened with Kamoshida, but there’s a lot he keeps to himself. He doesn’t tell Akira of the months the track team spent under Kamoshida’s thumb, aggressively ignoring that things were really  _that bad_  until one night, when he returned home with bruises blooming over his legs and tears in his eyes because all of a sudden, running wasn’t  _fun_  anymore and he didn’t know how to articulate much beyond that.

He doesn’t have the words to describe the sickening feeling that swirled in his gut whenever someone got hurt and Kamoshida would brush it off as just another  _accident_. He has no words to describe the all-consuming anger as Kamoshida just kept talking and talking and  _talking_ , pressing all of his buttons and spilling  _everything_  to the rest of the team just because he could.

(The incident itself, when Ryuji threw the first punch and the next thing he knew, he couldn’t use one of his legs anymore and would never again be able to walk properly without a limp — that’s something he barely remembers at all. Shadows shroud bits and pieces of the memory, blurring everything together and making him feel oddly numb and detached from it. Back when he first became aware of it, his mother had told him that sometimes, your mind does its best to protect you from the things that will hurt you. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, to forget.)

He doesn’t know what he expects, after Kamoshida confesses — maybe for one or all of his teachers to apologize. It’s those days immediately after the injury that are the clearest, in his memory: when all of a sudden, he went from Shujin’s star athlete to its worst problem child. His teachers would yell at him on a daily basis for being late to school, because it took him that much longer to get everywhere on crutches and his peers were mad enough at him to refuse him the space he needed — and then they would call him  _lazy_  and  _selfish_  because after-school duties had become impossible when he couldn’t even move without holding onto something. Ryuji’s long gotten used to it, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t still bother him, when Mr. Ushimaru sneers down at him like he always does the next day — like Ryuji is still a nuisance, like the shit show that is his academic and athletic career is still, somehow, solely his fault.

Kamoshida’s confession, Ann and Shiho and the volleyball team getting the justice they deserve — it’s not about him. It’s selfish of him to expect anything in return. Ann’s happy and feels safe at school again, and Shiho just woke up in the hospital. It should be enough, but it  _isn’t_.

It’s still half a year and a leg and a team and a whole future that he’s never going to get back — and he knows he has no right to be angry, not when he threw the first punch, but it still  _stings_.

He finds himself on Akira’s floor some days before their planned celebration with Ann. Akira lifts open the flap of one of the instant noodle cups laid before him, and experimentally swirls its contents with a pair of disposable chopsticks whose wrapper still lays wadded up a little ways away, from when he’d tried to toss it into the trash can from where he’s sitting and missed.

“Tonight,” he says as he sets one of the cups in front of Ryuji, “we dine like kings.” He opens the egg carton he’d insisted on picking up after school and with a dramatic flourish, cracks an egg over his noodles.

“Ooh,” Ryuji croons. “Fancy.”

Akira preens, and then cracks an egg over Ryuji’s cup as well. It’s so damn  _extra_  of him that Ryuji can’t help but laugh, despite the not so great implications that eggs with shitty instant noodles that had probably been bought in bulk to begin with are something of a luxury for Akira.

They sit and eat together, talking about everything and nothing, and this — this is what Ryuji misses the most, from the track team. More so than the running, it was the easy companionship with his teammates, how simple and uncomplicated everything was, as if all they ever had to look forward to was the track before them and the ground beneath their feet. How long has it been since he last spoke and laughed and dreamed with someone, and there was no guilt, or anger, or pain?

It… almost feels wrong, to do that now. Kamoshida might be gone, but so is the track team — so is the easy companionship Ryuji had with his teammates, and how simple and uncomplicated everything was, and the track before him and the ground beneath his feet.

Half a year, and a leg, and a team, and a whole future that he’s never going to get back.

Akira tips over sideways, bumping his shoulder gently into Ryuji’s. “You okay?” he asks. His tone is too light — maybe deliberately so — for Ryuji to feel entirely comfortable telling him.

—and yet, Akira has been nothing but understanding, all this time. It feels wrong to hide this from him, too. “I just…” Ryuji starts, and swallows when his voice cracks embarrassingly. “I just thought there’d be  _more_ , you know?”

Akira raises his eyebrows, and not for the first time that evening, Ryuji’s glad that Morgana is spending the night at Ann’s and is thus not here to call him an idiot. More of  _what_? It’s not like Ryuji knows — he hasn’t known since he broke his leg.

Akira exhales slowly, and looks up towards the ceiling. “I don’t think it’s hit me yet,” he says quietly. “It’s nice not having to worry about getting expelled anytime soon, but…”

—and then there’s guilt, because the rumors surrounding Akira hadn’t disappeared even after Kamoshida confessed. Not a single person suspects that, maybe, Akira’s criminal record could be just another thing Kamoshida made up in his mad grab for power — and here Ryuji is, being selfish and stupid over old wounds that should have long since scabbed over — comparatively, nothing.

“I think…” Akira continues. “I think it means that Kamoshida being gone isn’t going to magically fix everything, you know? We still have work to do, but not, like, beating up Shadows and storming Palaces.”

That… checks out. Kamoshida might have torn Akira’s reputation to shreds before he even got here, but Akira still fights tooth and nail every day to salvage with little of it he can. It might not even be out of a drive to prove to everyone that he’s not the heartless, cruel delinquent he’s been made out to be — maybe it’s what what drove him to Kamoshida’s office the day Shiho jumped, because his reputation hardly mattered when other people were getting hurt.

If Ryuji were even a little bit like that, then maybe things would be better now.

“You know,” says Akira, “I was so ready to just… keep my head down and not do anything this year.”

Ryuji snickers. “What, stealing our gym teacher’s heart wasn’t part of the plan?”

“Definitely not,” Akira says, laughing, “but I don’t think I would’ve even tried to do anything, if it weren’t for you… and I’m glad we did.” He looks down at his cup, and stirs its contents with his chopsticks in slow, lazy circles. “I think I would’ve hated myself, if I just sat by and did nothing. So thank you.”

There’s a million things that Ryuji should say: that it wasn’t so much him but rather the situation, when they were both suddenly, randomly, in another world that first day — that that drive to do good, instead of merely fading into obscurity, had been in Akira all along and would likely have come out sooner or later despite his intentions, regardless of Ryuji’s interference — that Ryuji is, at best, an idiot who doesn’t know when to quit.

(—but here is what Akira does not say: that it had been Ryuji to insist on going back to the Palace after that first day, that it had been Ryuji who had insisted on doing it for the volleyball team, more so than for his own petty revenge — because as much as Akira had done to help the volleyball team, to help Ann and Shiho and every other girl within Kamoshida’s grasp — so did Ryuji.)

—maybe, this time, it’s okay to be proud of the outcome. Maybe, this time, it’s okay to not be entirely okay, because it doesn’t erase what has already been lost.

… maybe this — new friends, renewed strength in his legs, and a future that can no longer be destroyed by the person who tried so very hard to do just that — is a good enough starting point.


End file.
